Wayne Burleson, Contributing Columnist

After a rewarding trip to Tanzania, Africa for 30 days teaching people simple ways to grow healthy food using very little money, I became the student. An older African fellow stated that before modern agriculture, people lived much longer.

Trend information on pasture conditions is valuable. Photos and transects data document the changes that have occurred in forage species, soil health, soil cover and woody over-head species over time. These changes reflect the results from your pasture management strategies.

Dark colored soils full of OM is like money in the bank. As it rots, it becomes food for the billions of microorganisms and earthworms, which causes new soils to form and generate new plant food. Organic matter becomes a reservoir of plant nutrients. Each percent of OM releases 20-30 pounds of nitrogen, 4.

So we tried her method of growing with deep mulch, we layered eight inches of old straw between tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in the springtime. All the plants turned yellow. Trying to figure out what happened; we pulled back the straw cover and found the soil surface was like mud.

Roberts is leaving NCBA to pursue other opportunities in the cattle industry and agribusiness. He will remain with NCBA until the end of July to help NCBA with transition of staff leadership, including his roles in several industry-related organizations.

I have been fooling around with electric fences for 40 years now and most of the time taking pride on building them all in a straight line. Why? Looks good to the eye? Will people think you are a poor fence builder if your fences are not straight? I am only talking about interior livestock management fences.

If you don’t know w h a t changes are occurring, how can you prevent or fix problems? It doesn’t matter if it’s your budget, equipment, land, family, or personal health, some monitoring effort should be formalized to help prevent and fix problems.

“Calf scours is one of the primary health problems in baby calves. Digestive problems such as calf scours are the reason for 14 percent of death loss of calves less than three weeks old,” said Kincheloe, referencing a 2007-08 study conducted by the USDA National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS).

“Calf scours is one of the primary health problems in baby calves. Digestive problems such as calf scours are the reason for 14 percent of death loss of calves less than three weeks old,” said Kincheloe, referencing a 2007-08 study conducted by the USDA National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS).

This Janu a r y, I spent two weeks on a dairy farm in Nicaragua. I volunteered to teach an intensive rotational grazing and electric fencing project on this farm. Early each morning, 30 cows are handmilked once a day by several workers. Pasture forage and supplemental feeding maintain the calves.

This Janu a r y, I spent two weeks on a dairy farm in Nicaragua. I volunteered to teach an intensive rotational grazing and electric fencing project on this farm. Early each morning, 30 cows are handmilked once a day by several workers. Pasture forage and supplemental feeding maintain the calves.

After a recent trip to Nicaragua in Central America on a USAID Farmer-to- Farmer volunteer assignment to instruct farmers on rotational grazing and electric fencing technology, we tested some very effec tive ways to build an inexpensive grazing system.

After a recent trip to Nicaragua in Central America on a USAID Farmer-to- Farmer volunteer assignment to instruct farmers on rotational grazing and electric fencing technology, we tested some very effec tive ways to build an inexpensive grazing system.

The US- DA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service says we are using and losing more topsoil than the pounds of food produced each year. One reference said, “Six pounds of farmable soil is lost each year per 1 pound of food eaten.” That’s not a sustainable situation.

Everything under the sun that sits unused for a long time goes backwards, including land and people. Healthy grasslands require periodic, positive disturbance and adequate rest. This is a controlling biological law. Break any part of this law and you will have consequences.

Knowing the health of any particular piece of ground— that is, what is happening on the soil surface and determining the health condition of the plants present— is important information, especially when you are about to make a major decision concerning land management.

Recently, I spent some time in Africa as a USAID (United States Agency for International Development) volunteer on two farmer-to-farmer assignments, each about three weeks in length. One was in Malawi and the other took me across the central plains of Mozambique.

Handsdown, growing soils is the foundation of good pasture management. I have learned that from the experimentation we have tried in our humanitarian food gardening efforts around the world. The more time we spend improving the soils, the less time spent fighting weeds, sick and diseased plants.

You would think that I know a lot about how to measure grassland health, but I’m still learning. I attribute this to Allan Savory (the founder of holistic management). Allan is one of those rare individuals who challenges your thinking, and about the time that you think you have it all figured out, you find out you don’t.